Various assistance systems are used in the automotive field to assist the driver during driving of the vehicle. Typical fields of use for such assistance systems include, for example, navigation systems, which supply the driver with relevant information to facilitate route guidance. Additional assistance systems assist the driver during parking, for example, by carrying out steering interventions or by displaying suitable steering angles. Additional assistance systems provide the driver with a visual display of the vehicle surroundings, which is recorded with the aid of cameras attached to the vehicle and/or other surroundings sensors. All of the mentioned assistance systems require for their function the most exact data possible about the surroundings of the vehicle.
A method for preparing a map of the surroundings of a vehicle with the aid of a surroundings sensor system is described in German Patent Application No. DE 10 2009 005 566 A1, the surroundings sensor system having an ultrasound sensor system and at least one image-generating camera system for the detection of objects in the surroundings of the vehicle.
Measured data of the ultrasound sensor system and the measured data of the camera system are entered in a shared map. These map data are used to assist the driver during parking procedures, maneuvering, or driving in narrow passages or in constricted surroundings.
German Patent Application No. DE 10 2009 037 835 A1 describes a method for the ergonomic display of virtual information in real surroundings. The items of virtual information are overlaid in a display device in at least a part of the view of the real surroundings in consideration of position and orientation. The degree of reality of the overlay may be increased, in that the items of virtual information are overlaid with images of the surroundings (for example, the points of interest). Surroundings maps are used, the items of information being extracted from Google Street View, for example, and considered dynamically, in relation to the location.
A method for the precise position determination of a mobile terminal is described in German Patent No. DE 102 48 534 A1. The mobile terminal records images or image sequences of surroundings, in which the user is located, via an optical recording device. The recorded images or image sequences are transmitted together with position data and data on the setting of the mobile terminal and the associated camera to a position and navigation server. The data and images or image sequences entered therein are compared to images or image sequences from an image database, which contains exact surveying data for the images. From the image comparison, in which algorithms known from video monitoring are used, the exact position of the mobile terminal is ascertained and transmitted back thereto.
German Patent Application No. DE 10 2009 018 073 A1 describes a method for updating a geographic database. It is established via items of information provided by a navigation system whether a vehicle is located on a road. A geographically coded image is then produced while using a camera installed in the vehicle. The analysis of the geographically coded image includes a comparison of the image to stored photorealistic image data, to establish whether an update of the geographic database is necessary.
In the case of conventional assistance systems having a connection to an image database or to an image-data-based map service, the connection is used to supplement the representation of the surroundings using images from a database, or to carry out a comparison of the surroundings data of the vehicle. The items of information from the image database or the image-data-based map service may not be used in the methods known from the related art for further tasks of the assistance systems, for example, finding parking spaces.